Corpus Vitrearum Volume Awarded Top Prize

The fourth volume in the Dutch Corpus Vitrearum series, Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman’s monumental Stained Glass in the Netherlands before 1795 (Amsterdam, 2011), has been awarded the Mr. J.W. Frederiksprijs for 2012, for the best publication on the applied arts in the period 2009–2011. The prize was shared jointly with Edith Frederiks’s Goud, zilver en zijde. Katholiek textiel in Nederland 1830-1965 (‘Gold, Silver and Silk: Catholic Textiles in the Netherlands 1830–1965’, Zutphen, 2010).

The prize was awarded on 19 November 2012 at the annual meeting of the Union of Dutch Art Historians (VNK, Vereniging van Nederlandse Kunsthistorici), when the work was praised for the breadth of its geographical remit and depth of its historical coverage. A whole range of issues is addressed in the book, including donors, donation contexts, iconography, cartoons, images of lost glazing, and excavated glass.

Publication of this work was drawn to the attention of Vidimus readers in the summer of 2011 (issue 53), and a recent review in the journal Simiolus was exceptionally warm: ‘This book is a more than worthy crown on the Dutch research into stained-glass windows that has been carried out in the past decades. It would merit the description ‘definitive’ for its exceptionally complete and illuminating account of the current state of our knowledge, were it not for the fact that it highlights so many new avenues for further research that a fresh generation of scholars will still have enough to keep them busy for years to come.’